Clear is the new clever

On July 1, 1991, I founded a freelance writing business called The Write Stuff. Clever, huh?  

After a few years, that little freelance writing business developed into a creative boutique with additional copywriters, designers and a media buyer. We offered our clients a lot more than writing, so the name clearly had to change. All the big ad agencies I knew of were named after somebody — Ogilvy & Mather, J. Walter Thompson, Leo Burnett — clearly, I had visions of grandeur. So, Shelton Communications Group was born.

In time, that got shortened to just Shelton Group with a logo that reflected our focus in the energy space.

As we grew, our focus expanded beyond just energy to the broader corporate sustainability sector, and the logo changed again. This one could have easily been judged as the creation of a narcissist, since the Shelton part was big and the Group part was little and missing its vowels. The idea, though, was that we were Shelton to the power of the Group: 

I eventually realized we needed a much bigger group to power us. As America’s leader in sustainability marketing communications, we were limited by geography and, frankly, limited by only doing marketing communications. I grew to see that the only way to drive real business value and real impact in the world was to bring the Doing of sustainability together with the Saying of sustainability at a global level. I found that opportunity — and that broader group to power our efforts — in ERM. And so we became ERM Shelton.

Now we’ve taken the next step, fully embracing our home at ERM, which is the world’s leading pure play sustainability consultancy. We are helping power ERM’s purpose of shaping a sustainable future with the world’s leading organizations. Every day, we team up with some of the smartest subject matter experts I’ve ever met who create GHG reduction plans, climate transition plans, energy procurement approaches, product sustainability roadmaps, social & community impact management, and so much more.We’ve expanded our sustainability marketing communications practice, bringing on an amazing EMEA team, and working with communicators embedded in ERM in other parts of the world as well.  

Nearly 35 years on we have, as we set out to do, created a market advantage for many organizations that are creating a sustainable future, and we’re now doing it at a scale I could not have even fathomed back in 1991. As we continue to drive toward that goal as part of the ERM team, it’s only appropriate that our name and logo change once again to something that clearly communicates what we’re bringing to the table as part of the ERM ecosystem. Today we become the ERM Marketing Communications Agency, or ERM MCA for short, with a new website that better captures what we offer now. 

I hope you’ll join me in celebrating this milestone and new chapter in the agency’s history, I hope you’ll visit the new site, and I hope you’ll reach out to share stories of the impact we’ve created together and ideas for how we can do more of it in the future!